Mail items, such as letters, large letters, postcards, wrapped journals, flat packets and the like, are sorted by their address in mail centers or large post offices in very large numbers and are deposited in a plurality of containers. For this, DE 10 2005 059 601 B3 discloses a sorting installation in which the mail items are transported, standing upright on their longitudinal edge, in a direction of transport to a ring of pigeonholes moving past transversely to the direction of transport. The mail items are shot one after the other into the pigeonholes, which move past horizontally, with the high cycle rate and the high density of the stream of items supplied having the effect that a very small time window is available each time for shooting a mail item into a pigeonhole as it moves past.
To increase the size of this time window somewhat, the stream of items is transported to the pigeonhole ring in a loading arm, it being possible for the ejection point thereof at which the mail items are transferred from the loading aim to the individual pigeonholes to be entrained horizontally with the moving pigeonholes. Once a mail item has been shot into a pigeonhole the loading arm is retracted and the ejection point aligned with a succeeding pigeonhole.